


we hold it down when summer starts

by brophigenia



Category: The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-29
Updated: 2016-12-29
Packaged: 2018-09-13 06:53:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9111367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brophigenia/pseuds/brophigenia
Summary: When the daylight rings crack, Klaus' first thought is Caroline.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [garglyswoof](https://archiveofourown.org/users/garglyswoof/gifts).



> This is a gift fic for the Klaroline Winter Wonderland exchange! I asked my giftee for some more information about what sort of fic they would like to receive and got back "a witch manages to destroy the fundamental component of what makes daylight rings work, Klaus freaks out and finds Caroline wherever she's currently at to make sure she's ok, but of course she's already on the trail of how to fix it." The plot kinda took a backseat to Klaus' stream of consciousness. I hope you like it!!

The air in this cheap motel room on the outskirts of the Quarter is sticky and thick, the furniture cheaply made and ill-maintained; the coverlet on the nearest slab of cardboard masquerading as a bed is disgusting, with visible stains. The scent of drugs and desperation and dissatisfaction is heavy in his nose, and yet Klaus Mikaelson cannot remember being in a place so lovely in recent memory—for at least two years, in fact. The explanation for this misguided belief could be found perched in the chair by the heavily-draped window, an open bottle of nail polish balanced on its arm— _Caroline Forbes._

She’s just as lovely as she was that day in the woods, dark eyed and bright and _challenging_ in a thin silk slip and oversized cardigan sweater. Her nightclothes— it was, according to the slim-banded watch he could see lying on one of the pasteboard nightstands, just after three in the morning. It was almost excruciating to stare at her and not touch her, he mused, and yet he could not move from the spot he was currently rooted to, very near the doorway. It felt nearly like magic, to be so frozen, and yet there was no witch keeping him so. The force that kept him from going to her, laying his hands on her skin like he had done all those days ( _months, years_ ) ago in the woods outside of Mystic Falls, was _relief._

He’d not believed that she was safe. Couldn’t believe it, even as he followed her trail, her scent, her credit card summary. All he could think of was the searing pain of the sunlight and how he’d had to flee into his compound like a _coward,_ about the numbers that had been reported to him of New Orleans daywalkers who had fallen victim to the malfunction of their daylight rings. He’d thought of _her_ first, of her safety, of her—her death. Her probable death. She so loved being outdoors in the sunlight, he knew, thinking of her golden hair all lit up with its rays. He’d hardly ever encountered her in the darkness, and when he had, it was usually during one of the many manipulations of his decisions or distractions of his attention she’d been a key part in, organized by that merry band of idiots parading around the Southeast who called themselves her _friends_ but yet could not even see her, could not accept that she was not one of them in the way that they desperately tried to force her to be.

 _Caroline._ It’s on the tip of his tongue, he can practically taste the sweetness of the word. Was there any other name that could have been hers? Was there any name so lovely, or was it just bias that made him think so?

Her eyes are wide and surprised but her smile holds no shock, a gentle curve of rosy lip and pearl white teeth. Her smile is a question— _what are you doing here, Klaus?_ He can nearly hear her ask it, can picture in his mind the way her mouth would move as it shaped the words. He can visualize the way such a phrase would startle him from his reverie and stir him into action, can see himself curving his hands around her jaw and kissing her just as he did that day in the sunlight with his still-clothed knees bumping against the bark of the tree he’d propped her up against. She’d been all infectious delight, and they’d grinned into each other’s mouths, teeth bumping, so many times that he’d lost count. He’d swallowed down her joyful laughter and her long-imagined and long-awaited moans in turn, taken them into himself for the duration of their lovemaking and felt all the lighter for their consumption.

“Klaus,” she says, finally, after raising her eyebrows a little and waiting for him to say something, anything, to break the silence that had pervaded since he’d broken into the room. He doesn’t startle, because he could see the muscles in her cheek twitch before she’d ever spoken, could see that she was about to say something, and he does go to her, but before he is within arms-reach he stops, hands shaking. Closer, he can count the strands of her hair, braided loosely over one shoulder, calculate exactly the curve of her eyelashes down to the nearest millionth of a degree, diagnose perfectly the shade of red paint that he would need to capture the flush risen in her cheeks if he were to commit this very second to canvas.

Closer, he can admit to himself just how _terrifying_ Caroline Forbes is to him. How devastating her possible loss was—he can look back on his movements over the last day and see how hollowed-out he was by even the prospect of a world without her, without the soft silken butterfly-wing sound of her eyelashes against her cheek with every blink, without the perfection of the curve of her waist and the flare of her hip, without her vocal chords that make the harsh syllables his given name sound in turns like the bane of their existence and like the belonging of some- some _man,_ not a monster to be feared in the darkness.

“Klaus,” she says it again, and he closes his eyes because he hadn’t anticipated this in his imaginings—the crash from desperation and disbelief down to salvation, preservation. The restoration of his sanity.

Her slim hands curve around his face, one of them going to sweep his hair from his forehead in a move nearly maternal if not for the way it makes him light up like a house fire, leaving trails of sweet sensations in the wake of the brush of her fingers. His chin turns entirely without his permission to press a kiss to the palm of one of those hands, a breath dragging roughly in through his nostrils and back out. He sounds like he’s trying not to weep, he realizes, and loathes himself for the weakness in a far back corner of his mind, the dark corner that seems to always take over in times of high emotion, a shadow that retreats like waves returning to the ocean and leaves only his weakness and the blood spattering his hands when it’s deemed itself to be satisfied.

 _I thought you were dead,_ he wants to say. _Don’t ask me to leave,_ he doesn’t want to say.

There are no words forthcoming, no explanations he can offer her. He can’t articulate how he’d felt when he’d tracked her and the Bennett witch all the way from Texas and found that they were in _his_ city. He can’t explain the way he’d felt when he’d stood in the parking lot and strained his ears and heard the faint strains of her humming, a sound so sweet that it could only have been produced by her in turns wicked and beatific mouth. All he can offer her is a strangled growl from deep in his throat and the sound of his knees hitting the thinly-carpeted floor.

She doesn’t say his name again for a long time, until she’s sleepily carding her fingers through his mussed hair and he can hear the beat of her heart so clearly with his left ear pressed to her bare breast, his arms curled around her waist and their legs tangled together atop one of those filthy beds. “Why are you here, Klaus?” She yawns, and he is struck by how that kittenish gesture goes right through him and curls at the pit of his stomach, adds to his contentment.

“I-“ he has to clear his throat and start again, his voice scraping out like sandpaper from disuse. “I heard of the failure of the daylight rings and was… concerned. For your well-being.” It’s stiffly said, trying to regain his dignity, build his walls back up a bit for when she inevitably says something too-true that wounds him deeper than any lie ever could. “Why are _you_ here, Caroline?” Finally saying her name is close to a religious experience, a benediction in three syllables. _Caroline, Caroline, Caroline._

"Bonnie traced the spell that cracked the rings to a witch in the bayou,” he can feel her shrug as well as see it, and he is secondarily distracted from her words by the sinuous movement, the delicate bounce of her chest that it causes, his gaze arrested by the curve of her left breast, tipped by one perfectly round pale coral-pink nipple, three full shades lighter than the hue of her lips. When they register, however, he tightens his grasp on her.

“ _What_ witch?” He snarls, drawing a roll of her stormy cerulean eyes in response to the murderous and Machiavellian thoughts she can see forming already on his achingly handsome face.

"We handled it.” She explains shortly, as if there was never any doubt that she and the Bennett witch would succeed. Like she hadn’t risked her life even to confront someone who attempted to massacre the majority of the supernatural population of the world.

“Where is the Bennett witch now?” He grits out, thinking of pressing answers from the other girl. He’s sure that he can pry a name from her at least, thinking of the vicious gleam in her burnt-cinnamon eyes every time she’d wielded her magic against him in times where he’d threatened her friends and loved ones. Yes, the Bennett girl would tell him what he wanted to know, allow him to satisfy both of their thirsts for revenge—

"Klaus, we _handled it._ ” Caroline repeats firmly, taking hold of his face and forcing him to meet her eyes. _Ah,_ he thinks, understanding now. There was no Elena Gilbert around to set those doe eyes upon her friends and influence them with her overly-developed sense of empathy, so unlike Katherine and yet utterly like her, too, dangerously persuasive and influential.

He can’t stop himself from taking her hands in his and pressing a kiss to each of her fingertips and then to the new, delicately-set oval of lapis lazuli adorning the middle finger of her right hand, reverent.

She will leave, he knows. She will leave, maybe not when the sun rises but within a few days, days spent languorously in his bed, perhaps, or in the patches of lush French Quarter sunlight that fall upon any of the thick antique oriental rugs in his rooms at the compound. She will leave, but he can see in her eyes that she will be back, sooner rather than later. He sees evidence of it in the way that the Bennett girl’s suitcase is not beside hers in the miniscule excuse for a closet that the room boasts, in the emptiness of the room’s second bed and the way her phone’s screen lit earlier with a message from _Bon_ that read _home now love u be safe._ She was _waiting._

Klaus trails kisses down her throat and breathes in her lemongrass shampoo and thinks _soon._


End file.
